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Controls and Features Added in ClientUI 6
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Intersoft ClientUI 7 > Getting Started > ClientUI Release History > Controls and Features Added in ClientUI 6

Glossary Item Box

Intersoft ClientUI 6 adds over 30 new controls to its already comprehensive tools portfolio for the Silverlight and WPF application development. ClientUI 6 is strongly focused in providing advanced line-of-business controls, ranging from powerful schedule views, lookup box, data combobox, to SQL report viewer and Office-2010 style ribbon.

The new release also adds significant enhancements to the existing controls as well as new framework features across Silverlight 3, Silverlight and WPF platforms.

This topic contains the following sections.

Framework

Event Aggregator

ClientUI now includes a built-in event aggregator in ClientUI Framework. Event aggregator is an advanced event manager that facilitates the decoupling of publisher and subscribers messaging between different part of applications. It channels events from multiple objects into a single object to simplify registration for clients. Event aggregator is an ideal pattern for applications built with MVVM pattern due to its loosely-coupling messaging capability. For more information, see Event Aggregator Overview.

Flow Document Framework

In the previous version, ClientUI added a powerful document framework which enables you to create a single content that can be consistently viewed in both Silverlight and WPF applications. In this release, ClientUI advances the document framework further by adding a sophisticated flow document library. Flow document implements comprehensive rendering and layout specification similar to those in Microsoft Word. For more information, see Flow Document Framework Overview.

New Controls

Scheduling Controls

ClientUI 6 continues to provide the most comprehensive tools for building rich line-of-business applications in Silverlight and WPF platform. In this release, ClientUI adds sophisticated and full-featured scheduling controls. Key features include full MVVM binding support for both data display and editing, built-in editing form, sophisticated navigation interface and superior user experiences.

The following table lists the new scheduling controls available in ClientUI 6.

UXScheduleView
A powerful and state-of-the-art scheduling control
featuring built-in navigation pane and multiple views.
UXScheduleDayView
A scheduling control specifically designed to
display events in day view style.
UXScheduleWeekView
A scheduling control specifically designed to
display events in week view style.
UXScheduleMonthView
A scheduling control specifically designed to
display events in month view style.

Data Controls

ClientUI 6 is strongly focused in advanced data controls such as data search box, data combo box, and data lookup box. The ClientUI data controls are built to adhere to the industry's best practice in design and architecture including full support for MVVM design pattern.

The following table lists the new data controls available in ClientUI 6.

UXDataComboBox
A high-performance, MVVM-ready combobox with
built-in QueryDescriptor support.
UXDataSearchBox
An MVVM-ready search box control with
built-in QueryDescriptor support.
UXDataLookupBox
An intuitive data input control that combines the ease of
auto-complete and the flexibility of custom lookup.

Reporting and Flow Document Controls

ClientUI 6 includes a new report viewer control designed that works with Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services. In addition, several viewer controls are introduced to display flow document. These viewer controls provide rich viewing experiences which enable users to easily view, zoom, search, print and navigate throughout the documents in both Silverlight and WPF applications.

SqlReportViewer
A powerful report viewer control designed to work with
SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services.
UXFlowDocumentScrollViewer
A rich viewer control to display flow document
in fluid/scrollable layout.
UXFlowDocumentPageViewer
A rich viewer control to display flow document
in page layout.
UXFlowDocumentViewer
A sophisticated flow document viewer control
with the option to toggle between scroll or page layout.

Ribbon and UI Controls

One of the major new controls shipped in ClientUI 6 is a highly sophisticated ribbon bar control. Designed with great details, ClientUI's ribbon bar is the industry's first ribbon control that meets the standards and requirements specified in the Office 2010 Fluent User Interface specifications.

In addition, ClientUI also includes a host of new user interface controls that specifically designed to integrate with the ribbon bar control such as listed in the following table.

UXFluidContainer
An advanced content control that automatically
animates the size changes of its content.
UXRibbonBar
A rich ribbon user interface component with fluent resizing modeled
after Office 2010 ribbon specification.
UXGalleryList
An elegant list control that previews specific visible items and
provides dropdown to display all gallery items.
UXRibbonWindow
An advanced windowing control with transparent client area
and primarily designed to integrate with UXRibbonBar control.

Window Controls for WPF

UXGlassWindow
A native WPF window featuring Windows 7 Aero Glass
visual style with high-performance transparency rendering.
UXRibbonGlassWindow
A specialized WPF window with Aero visual style which is
designed to integrate with UXRibbonBar control.

Enhancements to Existing Controls

Enhanced Popup

UXPopup now supports nested popup scenario to easily achieve certain UI design requirements. In addition, it also introduces a new modal feature which enables the popup to remain visible with the input events captured to the child popup. To enable this feature, set the IsModal property of the UXPopup to true.

Enhanced Busy Indicator

UXBusyIndicator now introduces DisableContentOnBusy property which you can specify to determine whether the content should be disabled when busy. In the previous release, this behavior is automatic based on the value in BlockUIOnBusy property. Setting the DisableContentOnBusy property value to false might improve performance when the content includes many controls that use commanding. To learn more about commanding, see Commanding Overview.

Improved Memory Management

All existing ClientUI controls have been enhanced with an improved memory management. This means that virtual content controls such as UXPopup and UXContextMenu are now automatically removed from the global handlers instead of waiting the system to dispose the instances, when they are no longer referenced or the owner of the controls have been removed from the visual tree. Consequently, the complex controls that consume these virtual content controls will also perform faster with better resources management.

In addition, the UXFrame and UXPage which serves as the fundamental navigation components have also been significantly improved with resource-efficient navigation processing. To learn more about ClientUI navigation framework, see Navigation Overview.

Integration with IdeaBlade DevForce

Since the previous release, Intersoft ClientUI installer has included IdeaBlade DevForce as part of the installation process. The integration enables streamlined development of cross-platform data applications in an end-to-end approach, from the view (UI) design to the entity modeling and data services. For more information about the integration features, see Controls and Features Added in ClientUI 5.

In this release, ClientUI ships more data controls and new project templates that work with DevForce such as UXScheduleView. To get started with UXScheduleView and DevForce, see Walkthrough: Bind UXScheduleView to DevForce Services using MVVM Pattern.

DevForce Version Update

ClientUI 6 now automatically install the most recent DevForce release, version 6.1.3.1. For more information about the changes in DevForce 6.1.3.1, please read DevForce Release Notes.

Due to the latest update in DevForce, several samples and project templates have been updated to reflect the new functionality and API available in DevForce 6.1.3.1.

Update in Intersoft.Client.Data.Provider.DevForce

DevForce version 6.1.3.1+ includes several new features such as Code First support and significant enhancements to the LINQ and paging capability. In this release, the ClientUI data provider for DevForce has been updated to take advantage of the new paging API introduced in DevForce 6.1.3. As the results, a new extension for ExecuteAsync method is added to let you easily working with paged data using QueryDescriptor.

The following code shows the differences between the previous paging approach (DevForce 6.0.9+) and the new paging approach (DevForce 6.1.3.1+)

CS Copy Code 
#region 6.0.9+

// Compatible with DevForce 6.0.9+
// var query = this.EntityQuery.Parse(queryDescriptor);
// query.ExecuteAsync(
//    op =>
//    {
//        if (op.CompletedSuccessfully)
//        {
//            if (onSuccess != null)
//                onSuccess(op.Results);
//        }
//        else
//        {
//            if (onFail != null)
//            {
//                op.MarkErrorAsHandled();
//                onFail(op.Error);
//            }
//        }
//    });

#endregion

#region 6.1.3.1+

// Compatible with DevForce 6.1.3.1+
this.EntityQuery.ExecuteAsync(queryDescriptor, onSuccess, onFail);

#endregion

If you prefer, you can still use the old paging code where the QueryDescriptor is parsed first before ExecuteAsync is called, however, it will not leverage the enhancements and the new paging API available in DevForce 6.1.3.

ClientUI and DevForce Business Application Project Template

In the initial release, ClientUI shipped with MVVM Business Application project template that uses WCF RIA Services as the data service provider. Starting from this release, ClientUI includes a separate version of business application project template that uses DevForce as the data service provider. This new joint project template leverages the new login API and enhancements available in DevForce 6.1.3. It includes predefined authentication services that takes advantage of ASP.NET authentication and built-in membership database. For more information, see Walkthrough: Create New ClientUI MVVM Business Application using DevForce Services.

New Visual Studio 2010 Project Templates

In addition to new controls and framework enhancements, ClientUI 6 also ships with several new Visual Studio 2010 project templates targeting both Silverlight and WPF development platforms. Each project template comes with beautifully-designed user interface and rich navigation experiences, enabling you to jump start your next-generation client application in less time with less effort. All project templates are available in both C# and Visual Basic language.

The new project templates include various business scenarios featuring some of the new controls such as UXScheduleView and UXRibbonBar. Each project template demonstrates the best practice of using these new controls together to create powerful and visually engaging business applications.

For the complete list of the project templates included in this release, see Introduction to ClientUI Project Templates.

New Technology/MVVM Samples

As in every new releases, the ClientUI live samples is added with dozens of new samples to demonstrate the new controls' features. To browse all the new samples added in this release, see Locating the Samples in Local Installation.

Additionally, numerous technology samples are added in this release which demonstrate several key features such as supported cross-platform, unified development model, as well as best practice in using ClientUI controls with other technologies like WCF RIA Services and DevForce Services. For the complete list, see Samples Overview.

To see the list of new walkthroughs and how-to topics, please refer to Walkthroughs and How-to Topics.

See Also

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